


Insomniac

by GodOfCats



Series: Fanatic Fiction [3]
Category: Multi-Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-06 22:30:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20514548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GodOfCats/pseuds/GodOfCats
Summary: A short story about a patient who can't sleep.





	Insomniac

If you sleep, you won’t wake be yourself anymore.

The hospital has been trying their best to save him, but he was far from the only one. They sit on their beds, pumped full of drugs, surrounded by noise and light. Without understanding the source, it’s almost impossible to cure them so the hospital has resorted to simply fighting the symptoms. Every ten minutes the nurses make the rounds. They check that they haven’t fallen asleep. Examine their blood, urine and stool. They never find anything of note but the prick of the needle helps to keep them awake, and the rest provides them hope. It’s simply a sickness, we’re looking for a way to heal you. The nurses assure them with hollow smiles behind thin masks, nodding and asking them questions. Psychological tests to check they’re still sane. Routine questions to check they’ve still been eating. Puzzles and riddles to keep them almost lucid.

He hasn’t slept in eight days. Eleven is the longest a human has survived without it. Sleep deprivation has taken its toll and he’s having trouble determining reality from fantasy. The hallucinations have been getting worse, the paranoia is setting in. The nurses are drugging him, he sometimes thinks. But then, through his little quarantine window, he sees things that aren’t quite human walk past and is reminded what will happen if he sleeps. Could they be hallucinations too, he wonders. But he doesn’t dwell. He can’t doubt his memories now.

Daily routine is slipping, same as his mind. Gravity of the bed is overwhelming and his eyes fight to stay open. He remembers a show he once watched. A documentary. An expedition to Mount Everest. Apparently the air starts getting thin and you start to have trouble breathing. Lack of oxygen to the brain causes you to need to sleep. But if you sleep, the cold will get you. You’ll freeze to death. You’ll never wake up. So you have to keep fighting, but the hallucinations get worse and you can’t see where you’re going anymore. At least they know where they’re heading, he thinks. At least they know they can get there, he thinks. The climb up Everest gets stranger as the frost consumes you. It starts playing tricks. You start feeling warm. Really warm. The bodies left up there are often in a state of undress, that’s how warm they get. Imagine losing yourself so much that you think you’re warm amongst ice and snow… He laughs. He’s not that far gone yet. But even so, it must be nice, mustn’t it? Those climbers don’t spend those last moments in suffering, do they? They’re nice and cozy as they let sleep simply take them away-

A flash of bright neon hair outside the window causes him to shake those thoughts off. He drinks caffeine out of a styrofoam cup and concentrates on the noises and lights. The room looks more like an arcade than a hospital room, he thinks to himself. Looking to the side, there are a stack of videogames and their respective handheld consoles. They’re meant to keep him alert and awake as well. But he rarely touches them. He’s never liked that sort of thing.

He likes sport. He likes spending time with friends. He likes being outside in the sunlight and breathing fresh air.

I don’t deserve this, he mutters. I’m the last person who deserves any of this. There’s millions of weirdos who’d kill to be infected so why am I the one who has to change? Why do I have to die? I don’t even know ninety percent of these characters people are turning into! Is this a fucking joke?

The irony of it all causes him to punch the wall besides his bed, but it doesn’t even make a dent. His strength has long faded, his body is ragged. His mind? Shattered. He focuses on the clock. It feels like the nurse had only just been in the room, but already one is due in less than a minute. He can hear them walking down the hall now. That same professional rhythm every nurse has to their walk. Do they learn it at nurses school or something?

Clack-clickclick-clack-clickclick…

Their shoes on the tiles sound like a mechanical pencils heartbeat. Even so, they’re somehow reassuring.

Finally, the steps stop outside his room. His head feels heavy and slow, but he still turns it around to greet the nurse. The handle turns, the door opens, and she begins to walk in. The same familiar outfit. White gown, nurses hat, professional demeanour. She would have been a looker too. With her long legs, her manicured nails, her shapely figure.

If only she had a face and not a mass of bubbled, tumorous flesh.

Before he could scream, she’d already leapt forward.


End file.
